The Writers' Circle

It is rare to find yourself in the position of being the accidental owner of a penguin, but that was just the situation that Alfred Carsey found himself in.
He had gone to the local auction house in order to buy a dining table that he fancied, but in his eagerness to secure said dining table, had accidentally submitted a bid on a penguin instead. As nobody else had bid (for good reason) Albert found himself driving home with a penguin sitting beside him.
Not knowing a great deal about the needs and wants of his new acquisition, Albert put the penguin in the bath, and went to see if there was any fish in the fridge that he could feed it.
When he returned with a bag of frozen prawns, he found that the penguin had torn the head off of his plastic duck, and was rubbing itself down with a towel and liberally dousing itself with Albert's best aftershave. Albert went to grab the bottle, but the penguin glared at him with such malevolence that it stopped Albert dead in his tracks. It is well known that the glare of a penguin is something that will put the fear of God into most animals, and is the reason why lions no longer populate the Antarctic.
Albert slowly backed out of the bathroom leaving the creature to finish it's ablutions.
Once he had calmed down and made himself a cup of tea, Albert decided that the penguin problem could wait until the morning, and so he settled himself down in front of the TV. He had just become absorbed in a particularly interesting programme about bus shelters when the penguin sauntered into the room, sat down beside him, picked up the remote control and changed the TV to the Fish n' Violence channel.
Albert edged off his seat and quietly crept up to bed. Locking the bedroom door behind him.

The next morning Albert set off to his work at the local lolly stick factory.
He had not slept well, and was glad to see that the penguin was fast asleep on the sofa amidst a litter of beer cans and empty chip packets. It was snoring loudly and Albert thought it wise to let sleeping penguins lie.
When he returned that evening, the penguin was waiting for him. It snatched Albert's bag of groceries from him and tipped the contents onto the floor, before selecting a packet of chocolate bars and a tub of ice cream and waddling off in the direction of the bedroom.
Albert looked around and saw that the mess made by the penguin the previous night had not been cleaned up but had been added to. The place was an absolute tip. What was the point of having a penguin if it just meant more work and more expenditure.
He didn't want to pass the evening watching the Fish n' Violence channel again while his erstwhile pet ate him out of house and home, and so he went to the pub.

While he was there he fell into conversation with the pub landlord.
Mr McVitie had been in the pub trade a long time, and could tell when  customers had come in to drown their sorrows.
"Penguin trouble is it" he said.
"How could you tell" replied Albert.
"See it all the time. In the house is it"
Albert nodded and took a pull of his beer. Mr McVitie leaned forward and said in a quiet voice
"What you need to do is get it another penguin to keep it company. That normally keeps them happy. Takes their mind off things you see"

When Albert got home from the pub slightly the worse for wear, the first thing he saw when he opened the door was the penguin stood before him with its arms folded across it's chest, tapping it's foot on the floor, and with a "And what time do you call this" expression on it's face.
Albert tried to ignore it and went straight up to his bed.

The next day Albert thought about what Mr McVitie had said. It seemed to make sense, and on the way home he called in at the pub to see if the landlord knew of anyone who was selling a spare penguin.
As luck would have it, it appeared that Mr McVitie himself had a penguin that he was prepared to sell at a reasonable fee. "How fortuitous" thought Albert.
Mr McVitie seemed quite pleased as well.

Far from bringing calm into the house, the addition of a second penguin simply doubled the level of discomfort. Not only were they hogging the TV control, but they would stay up all night playing loud music and damaging the furniture. They would tut over the food that Albert gave them, and sneer at his cd collection.
After a week, they made it clear to Albert that the bath was not big enough for two penguins, and that he should be thinking of providing them with a pool.
On reflection, Albert realised that this was not a bad idea. If he built a pool in his back yard, the penguins would spend most of their time there and Albert would get his remote control back. He set to with a vengeance.
By the following Sunday the pool was ready and when the penguins had shuffled out of the back door, Albert slammed it behind them and nailed it shut.
That night having thrown some fish out of his back bedroom window to the penguins to stop them hammering on the door, he settled down to the first quiet night he had, had in weeks.

Word soon got round that Albert had a penguin pool in his back yard, and over the next month the number of penguins increased as people threw their own troublesome penguins over Albert's back wall. At one time he thought that he had glimpsed old Mrs Cooper from the post office loitering nearby with a suspiciously penguin shaped bundle under her arm, waiting for a moment when he was not looking.
In a very short space of time there was hardly a blade of grass in Albert's back yard that didn't have a penguin sitting on it. Things were rapidly getting out of hand, and something needed to be done.

One thing that Albert had learned while living with penguins was that they are crazy about fish. I mean, you might like a nice piece of poached haddock for your dinner now and again, but penguins will kill for something scaly with gills. They will eat as much as they can get hold of, and the only way to keep them calm is to constantly throw wet fish at them. So Albert borrowed his brother's van, and one night laid a trail of sardines from the back yard into the back of it. The penguins followed the trail, and when they were all inside, Albert closed the back doors and drove into the city. He parked opposite the aquarium and when he reopened the doors, all of the penguins rushed out and headed for the main entrance. Before they had realized that the aquarium was closed for the night Albert was gone.

It was natural that a large gang of homeless penguins in a strange city should drift into the sort of employment that best suited their characters. As they are neither literate, numerate or great orators, it was no surprise to find that they went into security work.

So when you are preparing to go out to a night club, and want to be sure of gaining admission, don't forget to put a pilchard in your pocket.